Last week I visited one warehouse with loads of hardware and found an SGI Tezro workstation. I got to take it home and let it dry for a few days. After that I vacuumed dust from it and removed dust with pressurized air. When I first turned it on, L1 LCD indicated that 1.8V rail dropped to 1.2V and the system turned off, however on next attempt it said that everything's okay.

However not everything was okay: the front panel had only solid red LED lighted which, according to manual, means "System node board failure (failed to read PROM at power on)". I removed system node board and found some of the pins on the backplane bent (picture). I tried to fix it with needle and small tweezers back to this (picture) yet it still failed to boot. Is there anything else I could do to fix this computer? Is there any information on the purpose of 100 mil headers on backplane, node board and IO board? The Tezro had no side covers when I found it, so it is possible that the jumpers were looted at some point.

I'm not sure if this is relevant, but when turning the system on, the LED on backplane board turns from green to red and one green LED turns on on the node board near connectors (the one that had bent pins). Yellow LEDs on the node board are on all the time.

I think you're hanging on a hope and a prayer with that, but at least it's Christmas.The diagnostics and manual are written to troubleshoot expected failures, not "this machine was left in a disused barn and became a bat nursery".I don't think the jumpers are critical; but there are many parts that must all work for a Tezro to boot. Even low batteries will prevent them working. Have you connected to the L1 console and read the error log?

I second plugging a console up to the L1 port and pasting whatever it reports here. One of the nice things about the late of the MIPS SGI's was that the L1 helped diagnose problems when the machine was being especially sick.

As for the connector I've seen those spades get bent before but it was on the CPU connector in the Power Macintosh G4 which is essentially the same thing. So long as you bend them back straight and uniform with the the others it should be fine. It isn't like the Compression Connectors used on older machines.

Assuming this system didn't leave the factory with a connector with bent pins, it means someone removed the CPU board from this system, and when they put back what was inside when you bought it, didn't bother (or wasn't able) to put it back together carefully.

That unfortunately gives the impression of a system that developed a problem and either

1. someone pulled the nodeboard, couldn't make sense of it, put it back together shoddily and got rid of the system, *or*2. this system was used as a donor to donate a nodeboard to another system, and the failed nodeboard of that system was put into this one.

You may be able to recover the system, but I'd be surprised if it didn't require replacing some part of it.

To accentuate the special identity of the IRIS 4D/70, Silicon Graphics' designers selected a new color palette. The machine's coating blends dark grey, raspberry and beige colors into a pleasing harmony. (IRIS 4D/70 Superworkstation Technical Report)

I connected to L1 through null modem cable and got to console. Once I got some general errors (picture) and now it just occasionally says 'no response from 001C01 CPU0, system not responding'. I tried to get some data from the L1 controller (sorry for pictures of text, my only computer with serial port is windows 95 laptop with no simple way to transfer data from it):

I also did "nvram reset", but it didn't change anything. Does this give any ideas to what could be wrong? Are there more tests I could do to provide more information?

EDIT: sorry, forgot to add log here. I forgot to check the log at first, so it was filled with me resetting the system. After cleaning and starting the system it looked like this. Also i tested leds with the computer off and got this.

EDIT2: Figured how to enter POD mode, now it shows General Exception errors again.

It gets stuck on leds status 0x2A, then after issuing NMI (either front button or command) it shifts through few unknown states (transients?) and lands to POD mode 0xBC/0x80 where the exceptions occur

From the totally limited knowledge I have of the last generation MIPS machines the best I can say is that in relation to my slightly older Origin 2000, there's a connection issue. One of the nodeboards on my system has a flaky compression connector and occasionally on a cold start it will spam the console with exception logs and the first nodeboard will otherwise fail on discovery until I power down, literally punch the nodeboard in with my fist and power back up again.

I'm still a little curious on why you had to let it dry for a few days. I recall on a few of the earlier machines there's basically a compression connection between the CPU and the board itself which is quite sensitive to moisture.

I left it for a few days in a dry room just to make sure there was no condensation inside connectors and so on. The warehouse it was stored in is just a hangar-like shelter with free air circulation from outside and that week was rather rainy and humid. I once had an explosive accident with another device stored in such conditions, so now this is my routine to let the device stay for some time and for me to do some research first.

The connection between main and node boards is not a compression as far as I understand, however it does not seem much easier to work with. The uncertainty whether this is board or connector issue is what makes me reluctant to try and get another node board. I'll get home at the end of January and I will take the mainboard out to have another look at the contacts. On the other hand, if the L1 controller identifies all the devices on the node board (VRMs, CPUs, RAMs) as working fine, doesn't that mean that all required contacts in the connector are working fine?

pentium wrote:One of the nodeboards on my system has a flaky compression connector and occasionally on a cold start it will spam the console with exception logs and the first nodeboard will otherwise fail on discovery until I power down, literally punch the nodeboard in with my fist and power back up again.

A couple of questions to people who own working Tezro machines:Does the computer say anything about VRMs when plugged in?Does the controller go into panic when issuing soft reset after booting?Is it worth emailing ssh@sgi.com with my second (if not fourth) hand legacy system's issues?